“…To extend the usefulness of EIA kit for MAC-GPL internationally, I have compared cut-off level, sensitivity and specificity among Japan, USA, and Taiwan (Table 3). The performance in Taiwan (sensitivity: 61z, specificity: 91z) (13) was relatively low when compared to Japan (sensitivity: 84z, specificity: 100z) (11) and USA (sensitivity: 77z, specificity: 94z) (14). Possible reasons for low sensitivity and specificity in Taiwan include relatively high incidence of diseases due to rapidly growing mycobacteria possessing GPL and study population contains immunocompromised hosts, although studies in Japan and USA employed sera of patients with im- munocompetent MAC-PD.…”